Communication as an Essential Tool in Planning: An Example of Workshop at The University of Sheffield International Faculty

Written by: Tomo Popovic

Edited by: Dr. Dimitrios V. Nikolaidis

Successful planning greatly depends on interactive and effective communication among team members. Effective communication enables establishing trust and engagement and creates clear comprehension of what each team member has to do. Moreover, it can become a vital tool of success in both creating and executing a plan. An example of effective communication that lead to successfully establishing and accomplishing a plan was seen in student workshop held in City College, University of Sheffield in Thessaloniki. 

 

Team spirit and fun can go together!

Students of the Public Relations Strategies class were divided into four (4) groups of approximately six (6)  members each.  They were assigned with a particular task in a way that two teams work on the task separately from other two teams. Furthermore, the task for each pair of teams, was to build an improvised bridge from various materials (each team had received an bag with exactly the same material: cardboard, straws, papers, souvlaki sticks, glue, paper, aluminum foil, etc.) in a way that one team builds one half of the bridge and the other team builds the remaining half. However, each team worked separately and students could not see progress of the other group, which means they had to establish an effective communication so as to build the two halves that matched.  Additionally, before they started the task, they had ten minutes to create a plan of how the bridge would look like and how would they build it and to select team coordinators; that was the only time in which the two teams communicated.



Focus! Determination! Engagement

After that, the team coordinators would meet in every five minutes to inform each other of their teams’ progress with a time restriction of one minute to do so.  This limitation in time implied that they had to communicate in a highly effective and direct manner with clarity and focus in order to make sure that they both clearly understand what has been done until that point, and whether their halves matched. At the end, all of the teams completed their assigned tasks successfully since they had established great collaboration and effective communication, which were the key element in this exercise. 

 

In closing, certain principles generated from this exercise:

 

1. Be precise.

2. Be direct & open. 

3. Do not assume; ASK.

4. Listen to understand; not to respond.

5. Build team spirit & good climate.

6. Ensure team cohesion.

7. Give clear directions; ask for feedback.